Lawn Mower Depreciation Life per IRS: 5 vs. 7 Years and Section 179

For federal tax purposes, the depreciation life of a lawn mower is seven years if you use it in a landscaping, property management, or other non-farm business, and five years if you use it in farming or at a residential rental property you own. In practice, most business owners never spread the deduction across those years because first-year expensing rules let you write off the full purchase price the year you put the mower to work.¹

Which Recovery Period Applies to Your Mower

The Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS) assigns an asset to a class based on how the business uses it, not based on the equipment itself. The same commercial zero-turn mower can be 7-year property in one taxpayer’s hands and 5-year property in another’s.¹

Landscaping and General Business Use: 7 Years

Run a landscaping company, lawn care service, or property management firm, and your mower is 7-year property. The “seven years” label is slightly misleading. Because of the half-year convention described below, the deductions actually stretch across eight calendar tax years.¹

Farm Use: 5 Years

Mowers used primarily in farming qualify as agricultural machinery and get the shorter 5-year recovery period. If the mower is part of a farming operation, that classification controls.²

Residential Rental Property: 5 Years

A mower bought for use at a residential rental you own is also 5-year property. Equipment used in a residential rental activity follows a different classification than the same equipment held by a standalone landscaping business.²

Standard MACRS If You Don’t Expense the Mower

If you choose not to write the mower off in year one, or an income limit stops you, standard MACRS uses the 200% declining balance method for both 5-year and 7-year property. That front-loads deductions into the early years. Partway through the recovery period the calculation switches to straight-line at the point where straight-line produces a larger annual deduction, and the IRS percentage tables in Publication 946 build the switch in for you.³

The Half-Year and Mid-Quarter Conventions

Under the default half-year convention, the IRS treats every asset you place in service during the year as if it started at the midpoint of the year. You get half a year of depreciation in year one and half in the final year, which is why 7-year property takes eight tax years to fully depreciate.

If more than 40% of all the depreciable property you place in service during the year goes into use in the last three months, you must use the mid-quarter convention instead, which calculates depreciation based on the specific quarter the asset started working. That matters if you make a large late-year equipment purchase. All of this is reported on Form 4562.⁴

Writing Off the Full Cost in Year One

Two provisions let you deduct the entire price of a commercial mower the year you place it in service, and for a typical purchase in the $5,000 to $20,000 range, one of them will almost certainly apply.

100% Bonus Depreciation

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBB) restored permanent 100% bonus depreciation for qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025. Buy a mower in 2026 and you can deduct the full cost in year one with no dollar cap and no business-income limit.⁵

Because bonus depreciation isn’t capped by income, it can create or increase a net operating loss. If you’d rather spread the deduction, you can elect to take only 40% as bonus depreciation for property placed in service during the first tax year ending after January 19, 2025.⁵

Used mowers qualify as long as the property is new to you. You can’t have used the mower before buying it, you can’t buy it from a related party, and your cost basis can’t be determined by the seller’s adjusted basis.⁶

Section 179

Section 179 is the other first-year expensing option. For tax years beginning in 2026, the maximum Section 179 deduction is $2,560,000, and the deduction phases out once total qualifying property placed in service during the year exceeds $4,090,000. A solo landscaper buying a $15,000 mower is nowhere near either limit.

The main restriction is that a Section 179 deduction cannot exceed your total taxable income from all active trades or businesses. It cannot create a net loss. Any disallowed portion carries forward to future tax years. You make the election on Part I of Form 4562 and file it with your return for the year the property was placed in service.⁴

Which One to Use

For most lawn mower purchases, bonus depreciation is the simpler choice. It has no dollar cap, no income limit, and applies automatically unless you elect out. Section 179 is more useful when you want to selectively expense certain assets while depreciating others over time, or when you’re coordinating income across multiple businesses. You can also combine the two on a single purchase, though for one mower there’s rarely a reason to split things up.

De Minimis Safe Harbor for Lower-Cost Mowers

If the mower costs $2,500 or less per item or invoice and you don’t have audited financial statements, the de minimis safe harbor lets you deduct it as an ordinary business expense instead of treating it as a depreciable asset at all. No depreciation calculation, no Section 179 election, no bonus depreciation claim. You deduct the cost as a supply expense and attach a statement to your return making the election. For anything above $2,500, you’ll need one of the methods above.⁷

The Business-Use Rule and Recapture Risk

Every method here requires the mower to be used predominantly for business, meaning more than 50% of total use. You only depreciate the business-use percentage of the cost, not the full price. Occasional use on your own yard is fine as long as business use stays above 50%.

If business use later drops to 50% or below after you’ve already claimed Section 179 or bonus depreciation, the IRS requires you to recapture the excess deduction. You’ll owe tax on the difference between what you claimed and what you would have been allowed under straight-line depreciation over the standard recovery period, added to your income in the year business use drops.⁸ A dedicated commercial mower used only on job sites rarely runs into this. The risk is higher for equipment that does double duty.

Selling or Scrapping a Mower You’ve Depreciated

When you sell, trade in, or scrap the mower, start with your original cost, subtract all depreciation you claimed (including any Section 179 or bonus depreciation), and compare that adjusted basis to what you received.

Here’s the catch for anyone who expensed the full cost in year one. If you wrote off a $15,000 mower under Section 179 or bonus depreciation, your adjusted basis is zero. Sell it three years later for $3,000 and you have a $3,000 gain. Under the depreciation recapture rules of Section 1245, that entire gain is taxed as ordinary income rather than at the lower capital gains rate.⁹

Ordinary income treatment applies to all gain up to the total depreciation you claimed. Only gain exceeding accumulated depreciation gets Section 1231 treatment, which may qualify for long-term capital gains rates.¹⁰ For a mower that was fully expensed and later sold for less than original cost, the entire sale price is ordinary income. That’s the trade-off for the generous first-year deduction. If you sell for less than your adjusted basis, you have a deductible loss. Report sales, trades, and other dispositions of business equipment on Form 4797.¹¹

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 946 (2025), How To Depreciate Property
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 946 (2025), How To Depreciate Property – Section: Which Property Class Applies Under GDS?
3
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 946 (2025), How To Depreciate Property – Section: What Method Can You Use To Depreciate Your Property?
4
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 4562 (2025)
5
Internal Revenue Service. Treasury, IRS Issue Guidance on the Additional First Year Depreciation Deduction Amended as Part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill
6
Internal Revenue Service. Additional First Year Depreciation Deduction (Bonus) – FAQ
7
Internal Revenue Service. Tangible Property Final Regulations
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 179 – Election to Expense Certain Depreciable Business Assets
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1245 – Gain From Dispositions of Certain Depreciable Property
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1231 – Property Used in the Trade or Business and Involuntary Conversions
11
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 4797 (2025)